


How to Go Home

by Sixthlight



Series: Mostly Ceremonial [5]
Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: M/M, Unrepentant Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 13:35:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5628460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I can’t own a house in Hampshire. I’d have to turn in my working-class Londoner card. My dad’d probably disown me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Go Home

**Author's Note:**

> Originally started because of speculation in the RoL tumblr tag about Nightingale describing the Folly as his "London residence", and finally polished up and set in the MC!verse. Thanks to aiaiaias, maple_clef, and others on Tumblr for helping me figure out an actual location to set this in (rather than defaulting to Generic Unnamed Midsomer-esque Village or picking at random from Google Maps.)

“If we’re going to be driving back now we may as well stop for lunch on the way,” Nightingale suggested as we got into the Jag. We’d had a call-out to Portsmouth in the wee hours of the morning and it was still only eleven a.m.; at this rate I might even have time to get in practice this afternoon, which wouldn’t be a bad thing.

“Sounds good,” I said. “Did you have anywhere in mind?”

I was pleased both that we’d managed to wrap things up so efficiently and that we’d done it without having to awkwardly avoid the whole…marriage…thing. By this point everyone in London had gotten over it, everyone we interacted with on a regular basis anyway, and the people we _didn’t_ interact with on a regular basis were smart enough not to ask. But occasionally one or both of us would have to venture out into the rest of the country and someone would try to make small talk, and if I thought my prior life as a magical copper had been awkward, it was _nothing_ compared to my cheerfully heteronormative country colleagues wanting to know how my non-existent wife felt about me being out of town. Of course, I could have just given up on wearing my wedding ring, but that felt like…giving in, somehow.

 “Wherever’s convenient,” Nightingale said. He hesitated just a moment before going on, as if he'd had a thought. “What about Silchester? There’s a good pub, or there was the last time I was there.”

My grasp on the localities of south-eastern England was not as detailed as it could have been, but I was somewhat suspicious that this suggestion did not meet any definition of ‘convenient’, if we were headed straight back to London. On the other hand, my grasp on when Nightingale was trying to casually suggest something for reasons he didn’t want to reveal was, by now, excellent.

“Sure,” I said. “Where is that, exactly?”

“A little north of Basingstoke.”

That rang a bell, for some reason, as well as most definitely being out of our way, but I didn’t work out why until we were getting in the Jag. “Isn’t that somewhere around where you grew up?”

“Yes, it is,” said Nightingale. “Though I haven’t been in the area in…quite some time.”

“Want to see if the place has changed in the last few decades?”

“I suppose so.” There was a pause while he started the ignition. “And…I thought, if we had time…we might check on the house.”

“The house,” I repeated, hoping to elicit a slightly less opaque description. “Is this a job thing, or…?”

“No,” said Nightingale. “Purely personal.”

“Thomas,” I said, because that had become a sort of code over the last year or so for questions I was asking in a personal capacity rather than a professional one. Nightingale had a similar one, but it relied on the way he said my first name, rather than the mere use of it. “What house?”

“I did tell you the Folly was my London residence,” said Nightingale as we pulled out of the carpark.

I processed this. “Wait. You _own_ a _house_? In…”

“Hampshire; it’s not too much out of our way. A rental company manages it, but they’re between tenants right now – there’s some new people moving in at the end of the month. So we’d be clear to go on the property, at least. I keep thinking about just selling it, but – it’s never felt quite right.”

“You own. A house,” I repeated. “In Hampshire. That you’ve never mentioned.”

“It really hasn’t been relevant,” said Nightingale. “And technically I suppose you do now, too.”

“No,” I said immediately. “Nope. I refuse.”

He was smiling slightly. “So you’ll marry me for the Jag, but you draw the line at real estate?”

“I can’t own a, a house in Hampshire. I’d have to turn in my working-class Londoner card. My dad’d probably disown me.”

The smile broadened - Nightingale was finding this _way_ too amusing. I mean, okay, I had a fair idea of the disparity in our social backgrounds when I offered to marry him, but you’d actually be surprised how rarely it came up in that sort of direct way. We both lived in the Folly anyway and Nightingale’s only real extravagances were the Jag – forget about when he’d bought it, it’s not cheap to keep a car that age running as nicely as the Jag runs – and his suits. So mostly I didn’t have to think about it, and I made a point of not doing so. The whole thing was weird enough as it was. Bringing an entire _house_ into it – that was just cruel.

“You know,” Nightingale said. “I suspect this isn’t quite how this sort of conversation usually goes -”

“I’m serious, could we just go on pretending the place doesn’t exist?”

Nightingale glanced over at me, now with an air of uncertainty. “Does it really bother you that much?”

I sighed. “No – I don’t know – it’s just…a bit of a surprise.”

If the topic had come up before – I would have mocked him about it mercilessly, but it wouldn’t have thrown me for a loop the way it just had. That was the real problem with this being married business; every time I thought we’d gotten back on an even footing something would make it strange all over again. Like Nightingale owning a house. And I had a funny suspicion that his definition of “house” and mine weren’t going to be exactly the same.

Nightingale was smart – and kind – enough to wait until I’d finished processing, and he didn’t say anything.

“Is it the house you grew up in? You inherited it?” I asked after we'd gotten on the M27.

“Until I went to Casterbrook, yes,” he said. “I was back there occasionally while my parents were still alive, and more occasionally when my brother and his family lived there – it didn’t come to me until well after the war. As I said, I haven’t been back in some time.”

I wondered how he’d ended up with the place. Two sisters and four brothers, he’d told me once, and I knew he hadn’t been the oldest. Had none of them had children – or surviving children, perhaps? A question for another time, I decided.

“I wouldn’t mind if you want to have a look at it on the way back,” I said. “Didn’t really have anything urgent on my plate for the afternoon. Paperwork’s not going anywhere.”

“Very well,” was all Nightingale said, but he looked pleased, so I was glad I’d said it.

*

Silchester is most famous, although 'famous' is probably not the right word, for having the best-preserved Roman wall in Britain. This made me feel well-inclined towards it right away; ever since Herefordshire I’ve had a fondness for the Romans and their approach to landscape engineering. The pub Nightingale remembered had gotten re-named since the last time he’d been there, but the menu had clearly been updated since then as well, which meant we got a decent lunch. The lady at the pub asked if we were there to see the Roman ruins, that being the main attraction, and looked surprised when we said no. I wouldn’t have minded, actually, but that wasn’t what we were there for. Not that I was really sure what we _were_ there for.

We hopped in the Jag again after lunch, so I thought the place must be well on the outskirts of the village, but in fact it was a little less than a mile, not much past a white-walled church that probably hadn’t changed recognisably since the thirteenth or fourteenth century. I wondered if Nightingale had gone there as a child. I didn’t quite know how to ask.

I’d been half-right about my definition of ‘house’ and Nightingale’s. The place was recognisable as an actual dwelling, but it was still a big rambling thing, the original and practically modest section probably about the same age as the Folly – the building proper, that was – but added on to over the years. The grounds were well-kept. Someone was mowing the lawns and trimming back the verdant honeysuckle that sprawled over a gazebo in front of the house. But it was obviously vacant, right now, in all the little ways that were evident to my policeman’s eye. From this angle I couldn’t see inside any of the windows, the early afternoon sunlight reflecting off them, but it was a pretty picture all around. Just the sort of place I’d expect Nightingale to have grown up in, if you’d asked me. Very English – and I don’t mean British, either.

Nightingale parked the Jag in front of a garage which was much more modern than the house, although by ‘modern’ I mean ‘post war’. He gave it a curious look as we got out.

“I’d forgotten that was there. The old stables burned down in '65, or was it '67?”

“Why do you even keep the place?” I asked, as we walked towards it. “Or why did you? You’ve been living in London since the war, there doesn't seem any reason for it.”

“Inertia, more than anything else,” Nightingale said candidly. “It was a bit of a surprise, being landed with it – I rather suspect George had just forgotten about that part of his will…he was my next-oldest brother. It was just before I stopped getting older and started going the other way. At the time I thought I’d retire here, I suppose. If I ever got around to retiring. So I organised for it to be taken care of until then. And then…well, you know what happened after that. I keep meaning to sort it out, and I just never have; the rental company takes care of everything. I only thought of it because I got the letter last month letting me know the tenants were changing. The last lot were here for a long time – a decade, at least.”

I wondered what that would be like, to have a childhood home; somewhere that belonged to you, even after your parents were gone. Mum and Dad were still in the flat, of course, but I wasn’t exactly going to be inheriting it when they died. I didn’t even know if Mum would stay there when Dad died, odds being he’d go first, of course, her being the better part of two decades younger. Nightingale had grown up here, and it was still his, a century later, even if other people lived in it. That was…different.

Nightingale said he didn’t have keys and in any case wasn’t really supposed to go inside without talking to the rental management people, even though it was empty right now. We probably wouldn't have let that stand in our way but the lock-opening spell is just a bit destructive on the locks, and despite Zach's surprisingly patient tutelage I'm still not much hand at lock-picking, so seeing the interior was out. We took a turn around the garden instead. Whoever had been living here had paid it some attention, but the beds were empty now of anything that wasn’t a bush, or an actual tree. Behind the house there was a reasonably-sized lawn and several sprawling apple and pear trees; they looked like they might well date back to when Nightingale had been a child, or even a little earlier. He said some of them did, when I asked. And I identified them _without_ him telling me, in case you’re wondering.

“I used to spend a lot of time falling out of these trees,” said Nightingale. “Some of them, anyway. The ones down the far end are new.”

I tried to imagine him as a kid. It was hard – I’d never seen photos, if there _were_ any photos of him at that age, and he was so much himself in my mind’s eye. I _had_ seen him in one or two photos from the sixties and seventies, Met things, when he’d looked his age. That had been weird, shocking even; like looking at a totally different person. Or the future. But it wasn’t his future, it was his past. His future was indeterminate.

“Break any bones doing it?” I asked. It looked like there was enough distance for it, although kids were surprisingly bouncy – I had been. Not that I’d had many trees to climb. Or been the kind of kid who would have spent a lot of time falling out of trees if they’d been there, let’s be honest.

“No. But I tore up my left knee once when I fell out right onto my sister’s painting easel, got a very impressive scar.” He grinned in recollection.

I knew the one – it was so faded it was almost imperceptible, just a tracing of silver on the skin. Nightingale had had a long life, and not always a quiet one; he had a reasonable collection of scars, which I was getting more acquainted with these days. The kind on the outside, that was. The kind on the inside – those were less visible, and deeper. Although I had some idea of what they looked like, too, by now.

“Really?” I glanced up at the tree, then down at his leg. “I always assumed you picked up all your scars in the war – or chasing German archaeologists around exotic parts of the Empire, whatever it was you spent the thirties doing.”

“There were German archaeologists _once_ , I didn’t make a practice of it,” he said, sounding more amused than exasperated. “And not really – I got much better at _avoiding_ giving myself scars as I got older.”

I didn’t point out the two obvious exceptions to that, one of which I’d been present for. “Well, that’s reassuring to hear.”

We finished our circle around the garden and shamelessly went up and peered in the windows – it was very bland inside, clearly redecorated at least once, and Nightingale said it didn’t look anything like it had when he’d lived there. “But then, it didn’t the last time I was here, either. George had had the whole kitchen modernised and – anyway.”

We wandered back into the garden.

“What _were_ you expecting to see here?” I asked him. 

“I don’t know,” Nightingale said, slowly. “I wondered…if it had changed again, I suppose. Of course it has. Or…whether it was still there at all; I knew it was, but…”

Whether you dreamed it, I didn’t say. Whether the life you had ever existed, before the modern world. How many memories can the human brain hold, anyway? You’ve got a century and more of them – will they start slipping away, someday? The past vanishing entirely? It doesn’t work that way for the Rivers, I don’t think, but you’re not a River – we don’t even know _what_ you are.

“And I suppose I did want you to see it,” he added, looking decidedly not in my direction. “As things stand you’d be landed with the place if I got myself killed, you know; it would have been a bit of a shock.”

“I don’t think it’d be foremost on my mind under those circumstances,” I said.

“No,” he said. “I imagine you’d be far too busy with the DPS to be worried about any property you might or might not be responsible for.”

“It’s not that. It’s what Molly would do to me if I ever let anything happen to you – that’s what really concerns me.”

“Well, then. You’d be in need of somewhere else to live, so it would be relevant after all.”

“If you say so,” I told him, but in the way that meant I didn’t think because he said so, at all, and he smiled as he met my eyes; and then we both looked away.

We’d gone about this all backwards, you know. First there’d been the getting married practically by accident – or not by accident, it had been very deliberate – but it hadn’t been what you’d call expected. And then there’d been the whole question of consummation, and it had turned out that regardless of all the other difficulties we were mutually agreed on the benefits of reliable shagging. Apart from that we’d both been trying very hard to get back to normal, or as normal as anything ever got around the Folly. So we hadn’t – I’d never really thought about – whether I might be, or I could, or I was, or _he_ was, the point was, I was happy enough and as far as I could tell so was he, and what else was there to talk about, really?

So when he said that he supposed he wanted me to see the place, I knew exactly what he meant, and I had no idea what he meant by it. Nightingale let pieces of information about his past slip into conversation as if he didn’t want them noticed, or revealed them purposefully, to some point; he didn’t just offer me up things like this, whole swathes of history. Or – he hadn’t, until now.

“So is this where you picked up your bewildering attraction to botany?” I asked, just for something to say. “I’m still not convinced it’s useful information.”

“Twenty-three varieties of brick bond,” he said; I really never should have told him that one. “And you think it’s bewildering that I know what a few trees are called.”

“I don’t see that many different ones here,” I said. We’d gotten close to the apple tree again. Now I took a closer look I could see it was bearing; they weren’t ripe yet, and I had no idea what variety they might be. But there was a crop on the way, for whoever was moving in at the end of the month. An unexpected treat – or a hideous pain for whoever was in charge of mowing the lawn, if they went unpicked. One or the other.

“There was a big old oak,” Nightingale told me, pointing close to the house. “The last time I was here, you could see where the stump was – it blew down in the gale of '76, barely missed the house. And aside from the garden we all spent a lot of time wandering in the woods, when we could get away with it. Exploring, we called it. Nothing that hadn’t been explored a thousand times before, by our older siblings, come to that.”

It sounded sickeningly idyllic, but it probably hadn’t been. Childhood always looks better at a distance.

It was a beautiful day, hazy blue sky and not too hot; the only noise was the background buzz of insects and the odd distant bird. No bees, though, with the lawn trimmed short and the flowerbeds empty. They’d be off in other gardens, right now, or out front with the honeysuckle. I didn’t mind standing here a while. Nightingale seemed to be lost in memory. I wondered, again, just how we’d ended up here; not just here, in the garden of Nightingale’s childhood home, but _here_. I mean, I knew why. Lady Ty and all the rest of it. But it felt a lot more personal than that, somehow.

I remembered, all of a sudden, that first time, after. The _very_ first time. There’d been a moment when I could have gotten up and said, well, there we go; that’s sorted. Gathered my clothes and – not even the shreds of my dignity; we’d sort of set that aside, so I could have picked it up more or less intact. Said, good night, I’ll see you in the morning, let’s hope tomorrow’s a bit less exciting, today was enough for one week, wasn’t it?

And Nightingale would have said yes, and it was, rather, and good night, Peter. And that would have been it, really. We’d have – put it behind us. I’m not saying it wouldn’t have gotten complicated again; it would. But – I could have.

Instead I’d stretched out across Nightingale’s bed; it _was_ bigger than mine, large enough that I could sprawl without putting any limbs over the side, even with Nightingale in it.

“Do you think that counts?” I’d asked.

“What, for the purposes of consummation?” Nightingale had replied.

“Yes?” I’d rolled my head to look over at him. He’d been lying with his hands behind his head, unexpectedly relaxed in nudity; well, there wasn’t much point being bashful _now_ , was there.

“I really couldn’t say,” he’d said. “As far as I know there isn’t a checklist. And we’re not really equipped for anything more complicated.” Which was such a perfectly Nightingale way of saying _I don’t have any condoms_ that I bit back a smirk.

“I’m just saying,” I’d gone on. “I really don’t think that justified the larger bed.”

“Oh, don’t you?” He’d raised an eyebrow. I’d rolled over, so I was right next to him, up on my elbows.

“Nope.” You’d have thought I’d have wanted to do anything but look him in the eye; but it had been the only thing distracting me from wanting to touch him again. Just to check, you know – whether it felt the same way it had just before, that odd combination of mundanely awkward and an unexpected pleasure under my hands. More the second than the first. I’d been willing to wager the trend was in that direction, too. “And under the circumstances, I think we have a responsibility to be thorough.”

“Peter,” Nightingale had said, but he’d been smiling, and he’d untucked his hands to pull me against him, tugging gently at my shoulders. It had taken a second and I’d elbowed him a little bit, not on purpose either, but eventually he’d had me draped over him to his satisfaction, and kissed me with a lazy sort of intent.

“I take it,” I’d said, shifting a bit just for the sensation of him against me, lines and planes and unexpected patches of softness, “you’re in agreement.”

“Well, you might have to give me a minute or two,” he’d said, and I wasn’t _quite_ ready to go again, either – but I was ready to work up to it. “But in principle, yes.”

“Thomas,” I’d said, just sort of – testing it out again, whatever this new thing was we were doing.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I’d replied, and kissed him, because that was surer ground. And that had been that, really.

In the present – standing next to Nightingale under an apple tree he might or might not’ve fallen out of, more than a century ago – I said, “I’m glad you wanted to show me this, you know.”

“Oh,” said Nightingale. “Good.”

He looked like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t; just looked at me, like he was thinking about something. We were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, so I didn’t have much warning when he leaned in and kissed me, softly. I wasn’t expecting it, not then and there, and there was a sort of startled pause during which I’m sure he was trying to remember why he’d thought it was a good idea – I mean, I would have been – before I recovered my wits and kissed him back, and then it was like a window opening, or something clicking into place. I don’t mean that it got heavy, because it didn’t; it stayed quiet, and small, and very nearly perfect.

I think it might have been the first time we’d kissed each other just for the sake of it; not for ceremony, like the very first time, or as a prelude to sex, or even a postlude to it. Just for the sake of being close. Of being – how did I want to put this – affectionate. I guess. Of – I don’t even know.

I wanted that, though, I was suddenly realising, the casual little things, and I thought maybe Nightingale did too, and I hadn’t expected that, in any of this. The one thing I’d thought I could rely on in all of this was that we’d already known what we were to each other. Maybe I couldn’t rely on that at all. Maybe that was changing, too.

This was all totally, totally backwards, wasn’t it? But there wasn’t any checklist, as Nightingale had said – in a rather different context, but it was true either way. There wasn’t any right way of doing this, or wrong way. There was just our way – and given the way we normally got things done, at least there’d been a heartening lack of explosions so far. Of any kind.

We stood there for a moment, when we broke apart, and it was peaceful, and it scared the crap out of me, if I’m being perfectly honest. But not so much that I didn’t put my arm through his, as we walked back around the house towards the driveway and the car.

When we got there, we weren’t alone – there was an older white woman, sixties, maybe early seventies, standing at the end of the drive and examining the Jag curiously. Next-door neighbour, probably. She started when she saw us; I thought Nightingale might pull away, but he didn’t, although his arm tensed for a second. I thought about it too, I’m not going to lie, but why should I, really?

“I saw the car in the driveway,” said the woman. “Are you the new people, then?” Her tone suggested that would not necessarily be a welcome development.

“No,” I said. “Just dropping by.”

“And why would that be?”

“Are you a neighbour?” Nightingale parried. We’re police, after all – we’re used to asking the questions.

“Lived next door to here all my life,” she said, glancing at me and away like she didn’t know what to make of me, especially arm-in-arm with Nightingale; the juxtaposition was evidently scrambling her social signalling. “I don’t remember seeing you around before.”

“We own the place, actually,” said Nightingale, and I know when I’m being wound up – besides which I couldn’t give him the dirty look he deserved in front of her – but I just put it on his account for later.

“You must be old Thomas Nightingale’s grandson, then,” she said. “You’ve got the look. He said he meant to retire here – he was in the police, you know, In London - but then he never did come back. I thought the place must have been sold out of the family, but here you are.”

“Ah,” said Nightingale. “Quite. No, it’s…still in the family.”

“What’s your name, then?” she wanted to know.

“He’s Thomas, too,” I said helpfully – he deserved it.

“Are you and your…friend…staying in the area?” she asked Nightingale. She hadn’t actually addressed herself to me at any point in this conversation, may I add.

“How terribly rude of me,” said Nightingale, in that particular friendly way that means _to be forced to point out how terribly rude_ you _are being_. “This is Peter, my husband.”

I had to work really hard not to start at that. I mean – perfectly accurate, of course. But it was the very first time, as far as I could recall, either of us had introduced the other person that way. There just weren’t that many situations where that was the relevant relationship. Any situations, so far.

“And no,” he went on, “we were just passing through and thought we’d see how the place was doing. I understand there are new tenants moving in next month. I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything about them, though, the rental agency handles all that.”

“I see,” said the neighbouring lady, caught between obvious relief that she could hope for a better quality of neighbour – the less gay and interracial kind – and not wanting to _look_ obviously relieved.

“I’m so glad I finally got to see it in person,” I said, with all the sincerity I could muster. “Who knows – we still might end up here someday, right, Thomas?”

“Oh, you never know,” said Nightingale, with the glint in his eye that said he knew exactly what I was doing.

Our putative neighbour muttered something and left as quickly as she could. I would put down money that we’d be a topic of village gossip fairly shortly. Good thing for us we weren’t planning on coming back anytime soon.

“That was a _little_ bit cruel,” said Nightingale once we were in the Jag. “And you know you’d last about three days somewhere like this.”

“Oh, come on. She deserved it. And I spent a whole two weeks in Herefordshire, that once – it was quite nice.”

“You walked back into the Folly and declared you were never leaving London again.”

“I’m sure there’s a lot less unicorns around here, with all those Roman ruins. Makes a difference.”

Nightingale winced almost imperceptibly as the words _fewer, not less_ obviously crossed his brain, but his mouth stayed shut – I’ve definitely had an improving effect on him.

“I think I remember her from the last time I was here,” he said instead. “She’d just married and moved in next door, as I recall – same habit of cornering one in the driveway and asking questions. Although I recalled her being rather friendlier. But then, it _was_ forty-odd years ago.”

“Among other things,” I said, forbearing to point out the obvious. “Still think you’d ever want to retire here? In the unlikely event.”

Nightingale drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, thinking. “It’s been…a nice thought to have.”

“But not anymore?”

“I don’t know.” He turned the key in the ignition, and the car purred to life. “Peter - you were right, earlier.”

“I like to think I’m right in general,” I said, “but about what in particular?”

“There’s really no reason at all for me to keep it,” he said, surprising me. “There hasn’t been for a long time. I’m never going to be that person again, one way or another.”

I thought this over. “You sure about that?”

“I rather think I am,” he said, and we drove home – to London.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] How to Go Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11454327) by [knight_tracer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer)




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